Education in the United States today is not merely a legacy of the colonial project — it is a functionary arm of colonialism that acts to absorb even progressive educational movements. Willinsky (1998) contends that education continues to be shaped by the legacy of imperialism, and this legacy has mapped and named the world, “bringing it within a single system of thought” (pp. 9–10). Willinsky (1998) continues: “[T]he lessons that were drawn from centuries of European expansion continue to influence the way we see this world” (p. 25). In this chapter, I extend Willinsky's important insights to examine how education is framed by what I assert is the often invisible foundation of the colonial project in the West — Western metaphysics1 focusing on prominent discourses in multicultural education. I build upon the work of indigenous scholars such as Vine Deloria and others who have developed the critique of Western metaphysics in education (Cajete 1994; Calderón 2008; Champagne 2005; Deloria and Wildcat 2001).
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Calderón, D. (2009). Making Explicit the Jurisprudential Foundations of Multiculturalism: The Continuing Challenges of Colonial Education in US Schooling for Indigenous Education. In: Kempf, A. (eds) Breaching the Colonial Contract. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9944-1_4
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